April 2018 – Croixstone

Serial Breakthrough Innovators

Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Benjamin Franklin.

So what do these “serial breakthrough innovators” have in common?

NYU Stern professor Melissa Schilling explores the answer to this question in her new book, Quirky, which examines the traits, foibles and genius of eight fascinating innovators who changed them world. Read more here .

Cataclysmic Changes in the Workforce

According to one expert, North Carolina is facing a serious economic challenge. Read this article to learn how some believe the world changed in a very BIG way in 2007, resulting in cataclysmic changes in the workforce.

Best Business Schools

According to the Financial Times, these are the 10 best business schools in the world. And new to the #1 ranking is…

What You Need to Know About Social Enterprises

On April 16th, Social Venture Partners Charlotte (SVP) will host the annual SEED20 program which identifies, highlights, and connects the community to twenty of the region’s most innovative ideas for tackling pressing social challenges. In today’s business world, nonprofits are not the only ones concerned with being integrated into the social fabric of society. Earlier this week, Forbes ran an article titled the “The Rise of the Social Enterprise: A New Paradigm for Business” which illustrates that businesses today need to make a shift in management in order to be more integrated into the social fabric of society.

Social enterprises are revenue-generating businesses with a twist. A social enterprise has two goals that are equally important:

Achieve social, cultural, community economic and/or environmental outcomes
Earn revenue

In the Forbes’ article, a yearlong research and survey of business and HR leaders by Deloitte revealed that “citizenship and social impact” were rated critical or important by 77% of respondents.

One of the trends identified is that companies today must be “social” in a truly external sense, and one of the biggest challenges is that C-suite executives are not operating or organized effectively to deal with the new world of economic growth and technology revolution while effectively addressing diversity, inclusion, fairness, equity at work and more.

There are two dimensions to the evolution of social enterprise.

Moving from an organization which operates as a functional hierarchy to one that operates as a “network of teams.”
Each part of the company looks at the impact of external factors and the company’s footprint in the external world.

Click here to read more about the new paradigm shift for businesses addressed in the article and click here to learn why social enterprise can be a win-win for companies.

Biotechnology And Its Applications

Another core technology altering nearly every dimension of our lives as outlined in a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article is biotechnology. Biotechnology is really the combination of technology, chemistry, and life sciences. At first glance, many business leaders may believe that biotechnology only impacts the health care field. The rapid advances in biotechnology, however, show enormous promise and have the potential to “both expand existing industry boundaries and create entirely new industries,” according to Dr. Albert H. Segars, author of the article and PNC Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Faculty Director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Biotechnology Applications

Industrial Processing – applications in product development, pollution control, bio-recycling, and hazardous waste.
Biometrics/Bio-identification – expanding the use of biomarkers as a gateway to information access and commerce.
Bioinformatics – analysis of large sets of data used in the Human Genome Project, Disney’s theme park design, and more.
Medical – advancements in the field of genomics, production of vaccines, antibiotics, gene therapy, and personalization of implantable devices.
Food & Agriculture – significant gains in the production of plants, improved quality of livestock, pest-resistance crops, nutrient supplementation, and manufactured power fibers.
Energy – alternative energy sources, production of biofuels from algae and other plant and waste sources.

Click here to read the entire MIT Sloan Management Review article.